Report: Climate change poses risk of violent conflict over food and water

Warning: Don’t share this post with global-warming deniers. It will only prompt them to make fools of themselves.

But don’t fail to share it with your children. And don’t forget to promise them that you’re doing what you can to avert THIS KIND OF SCENARIO:

Climate change will disrupt not only the natural world but also society, posing risks to the world’s economy and the food and water supply and contributing to violent conflict, an international panel of scientists says.

The warnings came in a report drafted by the United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The 29-page summary, leaked and posted on a blog critical of the panel, has been distributed to governments around the world for review. It could change before it is released in March.

“We see a wide range of impacts that have already occurred … on people, ecosystems and economies,” said Chris Field, a scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science and co-chairman of the group writing the report. “Looking into the future, we see increasing risks that are more pervasive and more severe with greater amounts of climate change.”

Field and an IPCC spokesman confirmed the authenticity of the draft. “This is a close-to-final work in progress,” Field said.

The report describes a planet in peril as a result of the human-caused buildup of greenhouse gases since the Industrial Revolution, where glaciers are shrinking and plants and animals have shifted their ranges in response to rising temperatures. As global warming continues through the 21st century, many species will face greater risk of extinction, marine life will shift toward the poles and seawater will grow more acidic, the report says.

By 2100, hundreds of millions of people in coastal areas will be flooded or displaced by rising sea levels. The arid subtropics will have less fresh water, leading to more competition for resources.

The global food supply is also at risk, with yields of wheat, rice, corn and other major crops projected to drop by as much as 2% each decade for the rest of the century, even as demand rises.

Among the other risks forecast in the report: extreme heat waves that will be especially deadly in urban areas, where a growing population will also contendwith severe storms, flooding and drought. Rural areas will cope with less drinking and irrigation water and less productive farming.

Global surface temperature has risen about 1.5 degrees since 1880 as greenhouse gases have accumulated in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, industrial activity, agriculture and deforestation. Cutting emissions could ease the rate of change, but not until the second half of the century, the report says.

The report “brings this issue home and it shows us why it’s important,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University who did not contribute to the assessment. “The reason we care about climate change is because it affects us: It affects our food, our water, our health, our roads, buildings and infrastructure and our natural environment.”

Climate change alone isn’t the cause of most of the ill effects. Rather, it worsens them by interacting with other factors, such as population growth, urbanization and exploitation of natural resources.

The panel sees the changing climate slowing down economic growth and worsening poverty, hunger and disease.

The report also says climate change increases the risk of violence and civil war.